We caught up with the brilliant and insightful D’nelle Dowis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi D’nelle, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

The primary reason that I decided to grow Berry Interesting from a company of one into a digital marketing tech support agency is because of how so many businesses (and I’m referring to companies that are start-ups of 2-5, all the way to companies around 200 employees / $5M revenue) miss the mark when it comes to both decision-making surrounding their tech stack and choices regarding the build-out of their internal marketing department.

When a business (or entrepreneur) is just starting out, the core team is all wearing multiple hats. You tend to find a lot of “unicorns” in those situations – people who are very cross-functional, organized, and willing to learn in order to DIY to save money or keep tasks in-house. That last part is really key, because many decisions are made by people who aren’t truly experts in a given area, but are making “good enough for now” choices.

When a client gets to the point that they need Berry Interesting’s services, 99% of the time they have been using digital tools and services that were a good-enough fit for them in the beginning but can hold them back when it comes to growth and marketing success. We specialize in taking a business’s digital marketing tech stack from that original, good-enough space, into a space where marketing strategists and specialists are no longer distracted by inadequate tools and resources and can be have the support they need to focus on strategy and production work (as opposed to being dragged away into technical troubleshooting just to get their tools to work).

An excellent example of this is one of our favorite clients, a company in the healthcare industry that provides its clients with direct services as well as software and support. Their Senior Director of Marketing & Communications is effectively a marketing department of one, managing two websites (one that’s public-facing and another that’s client-only access). Despite the fact that the company has over 50 employees, a dedicated marketing budget, and an internal IT department, the entirely of their marketing rests on the shoulders of one person. In order for her to be successful in her primary role (marketing strategy, coordinating specialists, and copywriting), it’s crucial that she have support when it comes to things that would otherwise distract her from her primary tasks. She should *not* spend any time updating website software, troubleshooting DNS issues, monitoring or repairing integrations among the tools in her tech stack, or recovering from her sites breaking or being hacked.

The trouble here is that websites in particular fall in a grey area between marketing & IT, neither of which is primarily focused on building or maintaining public-facing websites. Decisions about hosting for a marketing site are very different than hosting decisions made by IT for internal/external resources. Decisions about marketing strategy require the full focus of marketing professionals, and they shouldn’t be distracted by trying to understand the details of hosting or educating themselves on the best combination of tools to ensure that their site, the tool at the core of all of their strategic planning and campaign execution, remains in tip-top shape to support their efforts. For companies with marketing departments of 1-4 people, using a trusted vendor to manage their digital toolkit, anchored by their website, is crucial the success of their strategic efforts.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I founded Berry Interesting in 2006. As the daughter of two very tenacious business owners, I understood from a young age what it takes to run an independent business. Building trust with clients while simultaneously forging strong bonds with other professionals and specialists was as paramount to my parents’ work in home improvement as it is to Berry Interesting’s success today.

I started out in journalism, with a particular love for typesetting and page layouts (as opposed to the more creative world of graphic design). My first job after university was at a very small, recently-founded newspaper in middle Tennessee. As the only staffer under 30, I was by default tasked with managing the buildout of the new website and setting up all of the auxiliary tools associated with that site (like social media and email marketing accounts). While the paper did outsource the development, I had a front-row seat to the process, and that kickstarted my career in web development.

Today, the Berry Interesting team is a small-but-mighty core of digital marketing technology experts, surrounded by a larger, trusted stable of specialists who are brought in depending on client needs. What makes us successful is a commitment to long-term relationships with clients. Our goal is to support them and their tech stack – with their website at the center of that stack – as they grow their business and their internal marketing resources. Success for us is found both in the ability to get to know their business and their website(s) over the years, which enables us to provide them with specialized advice unique to their business. We also plan from the start for the end of that relationship. We *never* want to hold a client hostage or be a drain on their budget! The horror stories of clients held hostage by developers are always front of mind as we structure our relationship. We are thrilled to see our clients “graduate” from us by moving their tech-stack support and decision-making to internal, full-time resources, and we plan for that transition from the very beginning.

Our primary slate of services, which we customize to every new client that joins us, is: technical website assessments, website development, automations & integrations among tools in a client’s tech stack, and – most importantly – ongoing support for their tech-stack with a primary focus on website performance.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The bulk of our new clients come from word-of-mouth referrals, and this is unquestionably due to the fact that all of our clients are, after one if not more missteps in hiring various subject-matter experts, warily looking for a service provider that they can trust to reliably, consistently provide the services they are engaged to provide, and to proactively look out for their best interests when it comes to their website and related digital properties/tools.

We’re very explicit that we value stability that transcends quarterly earnings reports, and that we intend to develop a long-term relationship with our clients. We do advise our clients in making decisions about marketing tech, but, in many cases, we make decisions on their behalf so that they are able to reduce decision fatigue and distractions from their goals.

On an ongoing basis, we focus on transparency and consistent responsiveness in client communications. We provide our clients easily-scannable reports on the maintenance work we do on their behalf, keep detailed records of all client requests, and proactively review the functionality and the performance of their sites. At least once a year, all client accounts are reviewed to identify areas for improvement in performance or budget allocation.

This approach has resulted in a steady, healthy stream of new clients, and revenue that solidly supports our own operations and plans for growth.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

From the start, our reputation was built and is maintained by being attentive, communicative, proactive, and curious about our clients.

The majority of our clients have come to us after being poorly treated elsewhere. I like to use the metaphor of a pet rescue; many folks end up on our doorstep after experiences with other developers that range from neglectful to, in some cases, downright abusive. We see our role in the beginning of the relationship as somewhat rehabilitative, teaching the client where they should trust us, where they should delegate versus DIY, and where they should retain complete control over their properties. The first few months into a relationship with a new client allows us to establish what they can expect from us over the long-term.

We set ourselves apart from traditional developers and development agencies because our primary focus is not project work. Most dev shops are all about building new, shiny sites, launching them, and then moving on to the next project. At Berry Interesting, our primary focus is on long-term, stable support. We do enjoy project work, and have built a stellar reputation in the site “refresh” niche, but we’re very selective about those projects in order to keep ongoing support as our first priority.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://berry-interesting.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/berry_interesting_productions/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Berry.Interesting/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/berry-interesting-productions-inc-
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqfwzYS13dVglbur3TXQzOw
• Other: You can find D’nelle herself on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dnellethroneberrydowis/

Image Credits
excluding the two device mock-ups of client sites, all photo credit goes to Alicia Leigh Photography in Austin, TX.